International banks granted some $6.5 billion in loans to Turkish creditors for clean energy investments, an official from the Turkish treasury said Wednesday.
'Up to date, multilateral development banks have provided $6.5 billion to financial institutions in Turkey for clean energy investments,' Hakan Tokac, director general for foreign economic relations at the undersecretariat of Treasury said.
Tokac explained that with Turkey's economic growth in the last decade, most of the improving energy demand was met by fossil fuels, which put a burden on Turkey's current account and greenhouse gas emissions.
He said Turkey is rapidly relying more on the share of renewable energy in its total energy mix, in his speech at the opening ceremony of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) energy efficiency financing forum in Istanbul, 'Building a Global Energy Efficiency Financing Alliance.'
'We approved the Energy Efficiency Strategy which aims to decrease energy intensity in Turkey by 20 per cent in 2023 in comparison to 2011 levels,' Tokac said.
Sylvie Lemmet, director of Foreign Affairs at the French energy ministry, noted that developed countries pledged $100 billion per year for clean energy investments in developing countries in 2009's Copenhagen Accord and called for action to 'show the world' at the upcoming COP 21 Climate Change summit in Paris this December that such commitments have been kept.
World nations will join to discuss commitments to reach an agreement for combatting climate change through the goal of decreasing global temperatures by two degrees at the Paris summit.
International Energy Agency, deputy director, Paul Simmons also said that in his opinion, an annual investment of $600 billion globally is required for clean energy to achieve the goals to tackle global warming.
By Furkan Naci Top
Anadolu Agency
furkan.top@aa.com.tr